


morning captain

by dolphineclaye



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Reader-Insert, Self-Harm, holt cares, holt is a dad to the precinct
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29462232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolphineclaye/pseuds/dolphineclaye
Summary: Y/N, a new(ish) member of the 99 has a secret-- a secret that could be dangerous to her. She's spent her time so far in the precinct trying desperately to make sure no one finds out, but what happens when the captain of the precinct notices something's off?aka Y/N needs some major comfort from the team, and they are definitely going to give it to her (eventually)Warning!! This story will contain descriptions of and is centered around self-harm. If this may trigger you or make you uncomfortable, please skip this one.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Y/N joined the 99th Precinct not that long ago, just a couple months. She had been working at the 47th before, but they’d gotten overcrowded in the office and with not enough crime she’d been moved. She really wasn’t sure of the place when she first moved to the 99. There was definitely a set dynamic, that she could tell. Her captain was nice, serious, and she liked that. Detective Peralta seemed really quite attached to him. Peralta also seemed very in love with Sergeant Santiago, and very afraid of Detective Diaz. Detective Boyle was overwhelming at first, but Y/N learnt to like his food ramblings. Sergeant Jeffords had been nothing but kind to her. After the intimidation of entering such a well-knit family, she discovered she liked working there. Everyone was welcoming to her, treating her like an addition to their family, not an intrusion. She liked the way Holt worked, how he oversaw everything, made sure his everyone in his precinct, detectives and uniformed officers alike, was up to scratch and doing well. 

This keen overseeing became more of a problem eight months later, however. Y/N had made sure to wear only long sleeves ever since she moved. At the 4-7, she wasn’t nearly as careful and had ended up having to bargain with the uniformed officer that had seen her scars to not report her for a psych evaluation. A police officer with a self-harm problem was not something you came across most of the time. She had started doing it years ago, back before she had even started at the academy. It was a habit she wasn’t proud of, but wasn’t something that she got too deep into until after she became a cop. All the people she was letting down; her co-workers and superiors, the civilians she couldn’t help, it was something she couldn’t handle. And so, it became a coping mechanism for her. 

She was hiding it well, she thought. No one in the NYPD (except for that one officer) had figured out what she had been doing. And ever since she moved to a new precinct, she knew that they would all be keeping an eye on her, seeing what kind of a cop she was and how she fit, so she knew she couldn’t slip up. 

It seemed as if she wasn’t going to. The first month passed and no one had any suspicions. Peralta, despite being a childish person, was a very good detective and the two of them had solved quite a few cases together. Diaz was nice, underneath all that scary, although Y/N would never say that to her face (she valued her life too much). And Holt was a great captain, holding her to high expectations and encouraging her to be a better cop. He was even sympathetic the day her dog died, giving her the day off (he mentioned something about how he would lay down his life for his own dog, Cheddar). 

Overall, she really enjoyed the 99th precinct, and she wasn’t going to let herself mess it up with her self-destructive habit. It had been eight months. Surely, she could keep it up. 

-

It was a Thursday morning, an early one, and Y/N was in the break room grabbing a large coffee. The air was sticky and dense, it was a 95-degree day, and she was wearing one of her more flowy long sleeve shirts. Her forearm was littered with last night's activities, and she hoped all of them had clotted properly. Y/N couldn’t think about much except the brewing coffee in front of her, and stood in front of the pot, waiting. 

“Good morning, Y/L/N,” said Holt as he entered the room.

Y/N looked up from her steady gaze on the coffee. “Morning Captain,” she said in reply. “Coffee, sir?” she asked, gesturing to the pot. 

Holt nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Oh, thank you Y/L/N, I had one before I left home. Just here for a plain bread roll – sustenance.”

“Of course, sir,” she said, then looking at the finally finished pot, reached over to pour herself some. As she did so, her sleeve fell slightly down her forearm, before she tugged it back down hurriedly, then continued to fill her cup. 

“Y/L/N, is your arm alright?”

Y/N turned to her captain to see his eyes on her forearm. She looked down at her arm, then back up at the captain. Quickly, she put on a cheery smile. “Oh, of course Captain – just a few grazes, I tripped on the stairs of my apartment on the way to work. What can I say, I’m a clutz.”

Holt’s concern stayed. “I can take a look at that if you would like, it didn’t look like it had any bandage on it.”

“No,” Y/N said, a little too quickly. “No, that’s alright sir I wouldn’t want to bother you with a scrape, I'll deal with it later.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, “I would hate to see it get infected, you never know what you're going to get from the surfaces around here, especially with Hitchcock and Scully around.”

“Honestly, sir,” she said, picking up her coffee with the uninjured arm, “It’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Y/L/N, I would feel a lot more comfortable if you at least just let me look at it,” Holt replied, and Y/N sensed his determination. “It will only take a moment.”

Y/N filled with panic and she tried hard not to let it show on her face. She didn’t have much of an excuse not to let him see it. “Please Captain, don’t worry about it,” she repeated. Y/N held the arm closer to her chest. 

Holt scanned her with his eyes, examining every detail, sweeping over her before they settled back on her eyes. She watched cogs turn behind his eyes. They both stood frozen for a few moments. Then: “Follow me please Detective Y/L/N.”

Paling, Y/N felt her heartbeat gain speed. He’d figured it out, she knew. He had brilliant detective skills, there was no way he couldn’t have. She cursed herself for being so defensive about it. Holt exited the break room and began towards his office, and Y/N followed behind, terrified.


	2. Chapter 2

“Sit, please, Detective Y/L/N.”

Y/N sat tentatively on the chair in Captain Holt’s office. She was determinedly staring at her fidgeting hands rather than his face. He had closed the blinds of the office before she sat down. 

Holt sat in his chair, and had his elbows resting on the top of the desk, his fingers intertwined. Blinking very fast, Y/N looked up quickly to see his expression, and an intense and concerned gaze met her eyes. She stared at her hands again, tasting her heart in her throat. 

“Y/N, is everything alright? Is there anything you want to tell me?” 

She could hear how much Holt cared; how much he was actually worried. Y/N felt tears pricking at her eyes. Still looking at the grooves in her knuckles, she shook her head. She didn’t trust her mouth to speak.

A creaking sound told her Holt shifted forward, closer to her, in his chair. “Are you sure? You know you can confide in me, not just as your Captain but as a friend.”

That was it. It had been a very long time since someone had called themselves her friend. The tears spilled out of her eyes without her permission, and before she could stop it, they were rolling down her face. Y/N sniffed, hard, and tried to clear her throat, her face still soaked in tears. 

“I’m s-sorry Captain. I really am sorry,” she said, her voice waving with each syllable. 

“Oh, Y/N,” sighed Holt sympathetically, “Please don’t apologise. But now I have to ask- can I see your arm?”

Y/N’s nostrils flared in the effort to keep back a sob. “I don’t—” She stopped herself. Y/N trusted the Captain, and she wanted nothing more in the world than to have someone to confide in, someone who she could confess all of this to, someone to rely on. But she knew that wasn’t something that was on the cards for her. She knew she didn’t get to have that, because she would either be sent to a psych evaluation and kicked out of the force or considered a freak and lose any of the trust she had built up with Holt. Her heartbeat raced, she had no escape in this situation and she knew it was going to end in disaster, one way or the other. The cuts on her arm still throbbed slightly.

Holt shifted even closer to her, craning his neck forward to make eye contact with Y/N. “I don’t want it to have to come to this, but I will, as your captain, order you to show me your arm if you don’t. I am only trying to help.”

Y/N could imagine the complete and utter embarrassment it would be to be ordered by her captain to show him her arm, to reveal her secrets. That was something she couldn’t let happen – for some reason it felt better to her if she wasn’t forced to do it. And so, biting her lip and with trembling hands, Y/N slid the sleeve of her shirt up to her elbow, exposing her forearm. 

It looked worse than she thought it did. The gashes looked ugly and red, slashed across the smooth skin of her inner arm. They looked angry, leading all the way from her wrist bone to the crook of her elbow. Most of them were crusted with blood, a few of the smaller ones scabbing, and a handful still had sticky partly-hardened blood stuck to the edges. 

Y/N was afraid to look at her captain. She didn’t want to see the face of horror and disgust he was undoubtedly wearing. Slowly, her eyes traced back up to Holt’s face. It wasn’t what she was expecting. He was looking at her face, not her arm, and his eyes held a deep concern and—sadness, she thought it was. 

“I’m sorry,” Y/N repeated, whispering. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” said Holt, his voice low and calm. “I mean it, do not apologise. You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry for not noticing anything sooner. You’ve obviously been in pain and we haven’t noticed. For that I am extremely sorry.”

Y/N looked at him in shock. That was not how she expected him to respond. 

“Now,” he said, “I’m sure you are aware of the process that must follow. You will have a psychological evaluation, and the evaluator will determine if you are fit to be a on the force. This will—”

“No!” Y/N surprised even herself with the exclamation. “Please, Captain, I beg you not to. We both know what will happen, they’ll see these,” she brandished the accused arm, “and immediately kick me off. I can’t let that happen, please sir, I can’t lose this job. I love working at the precinct sir, I don’t know what I would do without it, please don’t do it. I can’t lose this. I’ll try harder not to, I’ll stop. Put me in desk duty for all I care, monitor me 24/7 but don’t make me get a psych evaluation.”

Holt studied her face for a few moments in silence. She looked at him with pleading eyes, and he took in her entire face. “…You are asking a lot of me Y/N. To neglect my duty as a Captain, to ignore the protocol.”

Y/N bit her lip again, and her brows furrowed in worry. She prepared herself for her options; to keep pleading, or to leave the precinct. 

“But,” Holt continued, “I can see how much this job means to you, have witnessed it these past eight months you’ve been here. I’ve seen you throw yourself into your work. I can tell you take great pride in it and it gives you great joy. So, it may be that I’m neglecting my duty as a Captain if I do follow procedure.”

Her eyes widened in shock, and Y/N felt a flicker of hope in her chest.

“I will hold off on a psychological evaluation. On the conditions that you try to stop this—really try. And that you are restrained to desk duty, I check up on you at least once a week, and I can see your arms if I have any suspicions you may be hurting yourself. And if I decide you are still not well, I can initiate a psychological evaluation whenever I wish.”

Y/N stared at him in shock. That was definitely not what she had been expecting. “I- sir I don’t know what to say. Thank you. Thank you captain I don’t—Thank you.”

Holt nodded. “Of course. But you have to promise me you are going to try to stop. I’m not assuming it will be easy for you, but please try your hardest, I don’t want to regret my decision, or for it to become evident I have made a mistake in this. I only want you to be healthy and happy—I don’t want to have to lose one of my best detectives.”

“I really don’t know how to thank you enough,” Y/N said, “Really sir, thank you. It’s been a while since someone has cared enough to do something like this. I promise I will try to stop, truly.”

And she meant it. In that moment she actually wanted to stop. The way Holt looked at her after he saw her wrist was burned into her mind. A look not of disgust, but of caring, of genuine empathy and heartbreak. 

Saying nothing in return except another nod, Holt stood from his chair and opened one of the cabinet doors behind his desk. He pulled out a clear plastic box. 

“Now, I am going to clean those up, Detective, despite what you might want,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her. 

Y/N bit her lip, and she must have looked apologetic as his face softened as he came near her. 

“Count this as the first step in your recovery,” he said, “A marker of the beginning of you trying.”


	3. Chapter 3

When she got home, Y/N found her stash of razors hiding underneath the sink. With shaking hands, she took them out, and stared at them for a moment. Her eyes flicked over to the toilet basin. Then back to the razors. She had to. She knew she did. If she still had them, it would be all too easy to keep going. Even just holding them, she wanted to cut herself. Y/N shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. Quickly, before she could think about it anymore, she dumped the bits of metal into the toilet and flushed. 

As she watched the water swirl, Y/N felt panic rise in her throat. What had she just done! She wasn’t ready to just stop. She all but ran to her fridge and opened the freezer, taking out some ice. Y/N clenched the ice cube in her hand, her eyes squeezed just as tightly. She could do this. She could do it. For her job. So she wouldn’t disappoint Holt. 

It turned out that not wanting to disappoint someone was an extremely strong motivator. Every day when she walked into work, she would see him watching her intently, examining how she was doing. Y/N would smile at him and then she would make her way over to the break room and make herself a coffee. Holt would enter as well and pick up a bread roll. He would ask her how she was, how her day was going so far, and she would reply- most of the time honestly, though sometimes she would lie a bit about just how much she wanted to hurt herself, he was already worried about her enough and she didn’t need to give him more to be concerned about. 

Occasionally, when she was having a really bad day, and she couldn’t seem hide it from him, Holt would invite her into his office and sit her down. He would ask her how she was, how she really was, not the polite answer. Y/N would stare at her hands again, at her knuckles, and hurriedly mumble that she wasn’t that great. He would ask her to elaborate, and her face would flush with embarrassment as she said she wanted to do it again – she hadn’t, Y/N made sure to make that clear, but she wanted to – and she was just mentally exhausted. Holt would tell her to take it easy that day, not worry about getting absolutely all the paperwork done. 

After two months had passed and Y/N was still clean, well settled into her routine with Holt, she had a really, really bad day. It was approaching the anniversary of the day she had lost her first person on the job. 

That was three years ago—Y/N had been investigating a string of burglaries in empty houses all around a similar area. She was extremely frustrated, had been chasing the perp for a month and got almost nothing. On the 8th of May, a Wednesday morning, she got a call saying there’d been another burglary. But this time there was someone home. This time, someone had died.

Marlene Kirkland was shot in the chest on Tuesday evening, left bleeding in her own living room after the burglar had unexpectedly encountered her home and hadn’t been found until the following morning. She wasn’t supposed to have been there, Marlene usually had Pilates on a Tuesday evening, but it had been cancelled as her instructor had the flu. So, she stayed home that evening. And got shot that evening and died that evening. 

Y/N had never forgiven herself for it. Once she solved the case, about a week later, the answer seemed so obvious, and she knew the reason she hadn’t figured it out earlier was because she had gotten caught up in her own frustration. If only she hadn’t, Marlene Kirkland would still be alive. If she hadn’t, Y/N wouldn’t be a murderer. 

The 8th of May was fast approaching, and Y/N had been plagued with nightmares for days. She barely slept, and her exhaustion was overwhelming. One morning, she had woken from her short and restless sleep with what felt like a heavy weight on her chest. Y/N sucked in a breath and she could’ve sworn it was the most difficult thing she had ever done. But it was a weekday, and she had to go to work. She couldn’t disappoint Holt; she couldn’t skip a day just because she was feeling a bit down. 

So, Y/N dragged herself out of bed and she somehow managed to get to work both in one piece and on time. She went into the break room for her usual coffee, and soon after Holt appeared, walking towards the basket of bread. 

“Good morning Detective Y/L/N,” he said, “How are you?” 

It took Y/N longer to conjure up a smile than it usually did, and she had the feeling it didn’t look as casual and friendly as she had hoped. “I’m good sir, how are you.” 

Holt raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re alright, Y/N?”

Y/N nodded jerkily. “Yes, of course captain. Gotta get a good start on the paperwork, so I should head to my desk.” She then grabbed her coffee and exited the breakroom. 

Throughout the morning Y/N could feel Holt’s careful and serious gaze on her. She really tried to keep acting as though everything was alright, but every time she looked at the computer in front of her, the words seemed to jumble on the screen, and she struggled to keep them in place. She’d barely started her first filing task of the day and it was almost lunch. Her arm was tingling, more than just the tingling of healing cuts. It was an itchy sensation that made her want to peel off her skin and find its source. In the two months she had been clean, she had never had the urge as strong as she did then. Y/N kept trying though, to do her work. She kept staring at the jumbling letters on the screen and trying to ignore the itching on her forearm.


	4. Chapter 4

At about midday, someone approached her desk. 

“Detective Y/L/N, would you like to come into my office for a moment?” Holt stood looking at her, that kind glint in his eye. 

“Ooooh,” said Jake from the other side of the bullpen, “Y/N’s in troouuble.” 

“Peralta, shouldn’t I have those reports from the Michaelson case on my desk already?” asked Holt, his eyebrows raised. 

Jake’s also rose, higher than Holt’s, and his eyes widened. “Yes, indeed you should Captain, they are most definitely almost finished I haven’t forgotten about them at all, they will indeed be on your desk a-right now.” He then swivelled his chair back around in front of his computer and began frantically looking through his drawers for papers.

Y/N’s lip twitched upwards as she stood and followed Holt into his office. She could always count on Jake to make her smile, whether he was trying to or not. 

By now, Y/N knew the drill. She closed the blinds as she walked in, and sat, more like collapsed, in the chair in front of Holt’s desk. 

“Is everything alright sir?” she asked, as he sat in his own chair opposite her. 

“That’s what I was just about to ask you, Y/N,” he said, “You seem off today detective, I just wanted to make sure you were okay – is there anything you want to tell me?” Holt gave her a look that told her he wasn’t taking ‘I’m fine’ for an answer. 

“…This time of year is just a bit hard, sir,” Y/N said, already feeling her cheeks flush, “It brings up some memories that I’d rather forget- some painful ones. I’d rather not talk about it.” 

Holt nodded. “I respect that,” he said, leaning forward. “Y/N, to put it bluntly you look like… hell. I’d advise you take the rest of the day off.” 

Y/N blinked hard. She hadn’t realised it had really been that obvious she was having a hard day. She should’ve been better at hiding it. “Oh sir, really I don’t think that’s necessary, I’ll be fine.” 

“I’m sorry Y/N,” Holt said, “I’m going to have to insist. I can’t let you sit in this office knowing that you should be taking it easy.” 

Y/N opened her mouth to start protesting again, but Holt stopped her. 

“Please, Y/N. For me?” He sat back in his chair. “I need to know you will take care of yourself in order for this to work.”

Y/N bit her lip. “... Okay sir. I’ll go home. You can trust me, I promise.” She then gathered herself and stood from the chair and headed towards the door. 

“And Y/N?” Holt said, stopping her. 

She turned. “Yes sir?” 

“You have my number. You can call me if you need to. Don’t hesitate.” 

Y/N simply nodded and left her captains office.

Once at home, Y/N could feel the exhaustion completely wash over her. She twisted the lock closed on the front door, and then slid down onto the floor. Y/N rubbed the heels of her palms against her eyes and let out a noise that was a mixture of a sigh and a groan. 

On the back of her eyelids played the picture if Marlene Kirkland’s dead body, lying on the floor of her apartment. Y/N blinked quickly as tears formed in her eyes. The scene of having to tell Marlene’s mother that her daughter had been murdered, that Y/N had no idea who did it, played in a loop in her head. Her forearm was almost burning now. Looking down, Y/N realised she had been scratching it without knowing – the skin was beginning to turn pink. She squeezed her hands into fists quickly. No, she wasn’t going to. She couldn’t. 

But before she could stop herself, Y/N thought of the plastic shaving razor on her bathroom shelf. She thought of the pliers she could use to take it apart, to get out the blades. Suddenly, Y/N was opening the drawer and taking out the pliers. She was going into the bathroom and grabbing the razor. She was sitting on the bathroom floor, straining to break the plastic. She had to stop the itching. 

Her hands were shaking so badly, that soon enough both the pliers and the razor fell onto the tile with a loud clatter. Y/N blinked rapidly. The noise seemed to break the trance she was in. Her heart was beating almost painfully hard, and she could feel the lack of blood in her face. What was she doing? And then, Holt’s words flashed into her mind. 

“You can call me if you need to. Don’t hesitate.” 

So, she didn’t. Soon enough, her phone was in her hand and she was pressing the name ‘Captain’ in her contacts. 

The phone rang once. 

Y/N’s eyes flicked down to the pliers and razor a few centimeters away from her. 

It rang twice.

She didn’t realise how tightly her jaw was clenched until she actively unclenched it. 

It rang three times. 

That was too many times. Three times is when they can’t answer, three times is when you’re disturbing them from whatever important thing it is that they are doing. This wasn’t that important, why was she calling him? She hadn’t relapsed! She was probably interrupting some very crucial police work, maybe even an interrogation. Y/N pressed the red ‘hang up’ button and dropped the phone into her lap. What had she been thinking? 

Y/N sat in silence on the floor of her bathroom, for how long, she had no idea. She just sat and listened to her scarily loud heartbeat and her ragged breaths. 

A sharp and loud sound made her whole body jolt. Y/N looked for the source and found her phone screen lit up with a picture of Holt staring back at her. He was calling. 

She considered ignoring it. There was no way she wanted to tell him what was going on, she couldn’t stress him out, or disappoint him, like that. But if she ignored it he would sure as hell know something was wrong. 

Reluctantly, Y/N pressed the little green telephone symbol in the bottom right corner.


End file.
